Oh, I'm sure they could do it alone

Try: "We haven't found a novel economical way of doing everything we want to do with this technology, so we're going to have to license someone else's IP if we want to bring this to market".

I dare say IBM researchers could duplicate whatever the folks at Crocus have done if that were the better business move. The firm's come up with a few gadgets in the past, such as the tunneling electron microscope.